Cafés

Chapter is a café and bakery inside a restored villa in Al Bateen, sharing the house with the florist Ribbonaira, so that coffee and bouquets are made a few steps apart. The interiors are by Hana Akram of the studio IDST, who kept the villa’s domestic sequence of smaller rooms rather than opening it into a single hall.

The materials are deliberately warm: floral wallpapers, hand-carved gypsum, custom mosaics and dark timber shelving holding ceramics, books and art, with banquettes and carved ceilings repeating from room to room. Wall sconces by Huey Lightshop take over as daylight fades.

Knead’s second home sits within Abu Dhabi Royal Equestrian Arts on Jubail Island, in buildings inspired by Spanish haciendas. The interiors, by the studio Patriarche, received a Gold certification at the 19th Grands Prix du Design.

Plaster-coated arches carry the architecture indoors; a travertine counter with a bespoke Arabic-inspired motif anchors the bakery, and travertine frames the windows. Tones of terracotta, sand and wheat, solid wood displays and a marble parquet lead to the dining room, where the open kitchen and its pizza oven are framed by columns of midnight-blue marble. The menu runs from handcrafted sourdough and croissants to specialty coffee.

Anko is a Japanese patisserie on the rooftop of teamLab Phenomena Abu Dhabi, in the Saadiyat Cultural District. Its design takes oshibana — the Japanese art of pressed flowers — as its starting point, with organic shapes, natural materials and subtle floral accents.

Inside, white furnishings dominate, ceilings snake overhead and patterned floors ripple underfoot; outside, a terrace looks over the water. The menu is built on Japanese confectionery — wagashi, yogashi and pan — alongside specialty coffee and ceremonial matcha.

What Not is a café and concept store where coffee shares the room with flowers, ceramics and objects. Its interiors are furnished almost entirely by Klekktic, the bespoke furniture studio founded in Dubai in 2019, so that seating, tables and display units read as one body of work.

Near+Far describes a calibrated restraint: stools and low benches mixed with sculptural armchairs, tabletops in brushed metal or wood, brushed-steel frames and surfaces that seem sculpted rather than applied, with the coffee bar framed by shelving that is part storage, part display. It is a small, homegrown case for regional furniture making.

Seed & Bloom is a neighbourhood café and bakery at Gardens Plaza in Al Raha Gardens, open daily, with a programme of workshops and talks. Its interior, by TGP International, was a 2025 winner at the Rome Design Awards in the restaurants and cafés category.

The design team took the desert hyacinth as its cue — earthy tones, natural textures and an open plan, with a transparent bakery kitchen and indoor and outdoor rooms that run together under plenty of daylight. According to the award entry, the materials were chosen for a lighter footprint: biodegradable mycelium panels, recycled-plastic tabletops, natural clay plaster and FSC-certified timber.